Yes under UK regulations a cheque is composed of is a written instruction for your bank to create a payment.

The conventional format cheque figures sort codes accounts numbers and the like were released for ease of processing and after that facilitate automation of processing.

The tamper evidence magnetic and ink printing should happen to decrease fraud, together with the ink to helping automation...OCR was fairly crude back then.

Years before, I did hear of a farmer writing a cheque on the side of a bunny (or possibly its bum ) That one got on TV!... Clearly, this was a publicity stunt seeing a few grievance the farmers needed, however they had a chap in the Institute of Bankers, who affirmed that it had been lawful.